All the members of the European Union espouse the common value of fair and efficient cooperation, which in turn involves smooth communication on as equal a footing as possible in business, politics, the arts and the EU institutions. The large linguistic communities, whose languages are often learned as foreign languages, also have particular interests....
more
New York Review of Books | Outlook India | HVG | Observator Cultural | Elet es Irodalom | Gazeta Wyborcza | London Review of Books | Polityka | Lettre International
New York Review of Books 11.12.2008 (USA)
The New York Review of Books publishes the "Charter 2008" which has been signed by over 300 Chinese intellectuals, among them government officials. It is intended as an homage to the Czecheslovakian "Charter 77" and was deliberately launched on December 10th, Human Rights Day. Liu Xiabo, one of the initiators, and several other signatories were arrested last Monday. The charta lists an entire catalogue of demands for democratising China: "Authoritarianism is in general decline throughout the world; in China, too, the era of emperors and overlords is on the way out. The time is arriving everywhere for citizens to be masters of states. For China the path that leads out of our current predicament is to divest ourselves of the authoritarian notion of reliance on an 'enlightened overlord' or an 'honest official' and to turn instead toward a system of liberties, democracy, and the rule of law, and toward fostering the consciousness of modern citizens who see rights as fundamental and participation as a duty."
Outlook India 21.12.2008 (India)
Don't look at Pakistan or at the Muslims, look in the mirror, Arundhati Roy urges her fellow Indians. There is no excuse for Islamic terrorism but, she maintains in her highly informative survey of – not always Muslim – terrorist attacks and the reaction of the politicians and the judiciary, war or Hindu terrorism are not the answer. Because terrorists, whatever their provenance, all have one thing in common: they need victims from their own ranks. This was proven again by the terrorists behind the Mumbai blasts: "If the men were indeed members of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, why didn't it matter to them that a large number of their victims were Muslim, or that their action was likely to result in a severe backlash against the Muslim community in India whose rights they claim to be fighting for? Terrorism is a heartless ideology, and like most ideologies that have their eye on the Big Picture, individuals don't figure in its calculations except as collateral damage. It has always been a part of - and often even the aim of - terrorist strategy to exacerbate a bad situation in order to expose hidden fault lines. The blood of 'martyrs' irrigates terrorism. Hindu terrorists need dead Hindus, Communist terrorists need dead proletarians, Islamist terrorists need dead Muslims."
HVG 13.12.2008 (Hungary)
Hungary's Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany has announced tough new measures to combat corruption. Good idea, writes the lawyer Andras Schiffer, in view of Hungary's poor performance in the Transparency International ratings where it has dropped from 39th to 47th position. It is just a shame that the new clamp-down has nothing to do with clearing up the chronic bout of corruption now underway. "Instead there will be anti-corruption lectures for the government - the fourth lot since 2003 – and a hotline where people can ring in to report corruption. And the most draconian measure is a sort of deal which will allow anyone informing the authorities about suspected corruption cases to obtain a share of the resulting revenue which goes to the state. This concept, which has been plucked from U.S legislation, suggests that the government has a peculiar idea about the people: they are not moral beings who might be prevented from informing on corrupt politicians out of fear, hopelessness or the lack of transparency, but they are greedy profiteers who think they deserve their cut. This view is particularly explicit in the introduction to the draft bill. The fight against corruption, it says, 'is of the utmost importance from the perspective of competitive capabilities of the Republic of Hungary and its interational image.' But there is not one reference to the quality of the democracy."
Observator Cultural 15.12.2008 (Romania)
Ovidiu Simonca talks to the writer Mircea Horia Simionescu, who turned 80 this year. When accused of misogyny he blithely replies: "You couldn't call me a skirt chaser but I've always had a way with the ladies. I was constantly in love." But it was the tragic experiences that were better for business. "I don't want to have to tell you again how useful the experience of infidelity is...for writing. I was hungry for knowledge: femininity and women were an object of study for me. A person is not complete if they haven't lived through these things. I also survived a train accident. And then there was the time when I was chaperoning two girls in the mountains. They were in my care, nothing else, and as we approached Piatra Arsa, we hit a blizzard. We looked into the abyss. We could have died, all three of us. Everything that happened to me was useful for my writing. All the adventures, all the accidents, the suicide attempt. Everything. Don't you think that's crazy?"
Elet es Irodalom 05.12.2008 (Hungary)
Looking back, Janos Szeky can't believe that Janos Kadar, the "legendary" General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, was held in such high esteem right to the end of his term in office. And not only in the West (where his campaign of revenge against the insurgents of 1956 was never mentioned), but also at home where he was considered a perfectly acceptable politician – as if no one had noticed what an intellectual lightweight he was. He himself admitted to being "a primitive person". Szeky writes: "The masses were delighted with someone who had as poor a command of the Hungarian language as they did, speaking in nothing but truisms. None of this worked against him, it actually increased the dictator's unquestionable popularity. It seems to be a golden rule that obvious intelligence in not a trait that people want to see in politicians. But it is alarming what an effect the primitiveness and the mental decay of the former general secretary had on political behavioural patterns in Hungary after the fall of Communism – a complex sentence with a hint of irony in it is seen as proof of transgression and arrogance. This ties in with the terrible anti-intellectualism so prevalent in the media, which to a large extent is the fault of the legislators who in turn grew up with the Kadar model."
Gazeta Wyborcza 13.12.2008 (Poland)
Russia might have lost hundreds of billions of dollars in the credit crisis but Victor Erofeev is not satisfied yet! "There is a general feeling of fear that something is going to happen. We just don't know what it is or how bad it will be. It might come in the form of social unrest, because of all the job losses, but whether it will be enough to force through change, is unclear. Until now, our elites have only recognised that it is better to take capital out of the country. You could say that Russia is waiting for its Tsunami," the Russian writer said in an interview.
London Review of Books 15.12.2008 (UK)
In a "Diary" column the writer Tariq Ali gives a sober description of a number of terrible "honour killings" in Pakistan. At the end of the article we found out how he was affected personally: "In the last week of October, my uncle's granddaughter, Zainab, barely 18 years old, was shot dead by her brothers, Inam and Hamza Ahmed. Zainab apparently had a lover and despite repeated warnings refused to stop seeing him. She was on the phone to him in her grandfather's house when her brothers pumped seven bullets into her body. I don't know whether her mother, Ghairat’s oldest daughter Roohi, whom I last saw when she was about ten, was part of the plot. Whether or not she was involved, I find it deeply shocking that my uncle allowed the young woman's body to be buried that same day without at least insisting that a First Information Report be lodged at the local police station, let alone demanding an autopsy."
Polityka 11.12.2008 (Poland)
Throughout the nineties, Kazimiera Szczuka regrets to inform us (here in German), Polish women writers were either ridiculed, published in series entitled "for the handbag" and "with the broom" – or written off by the critic Przemyslaw Czaplinski as petit-bourgeois. But things have changed, writes Szczuka. "Like Izabela Filipiak whose book 'Absolutna Amnezja' attracted so much critical attention, today Bozena Keff and other women writers of the youngest generation are attempting to refresh the national paradigms. The language has changed, as have the times and the literary institutions, but the basic question is as burning as ever: where is women's place in history? Who has the right to construct a collective narrative? Dorota Maslowska's play 'Misdzy nami dobrze jest' (We Have It Good), Keff's 'Utwor o Matce i Ojczyznie' (A Play about Mother and Homeland), an oratorio or poem which has actually been recognised as a masterpiece by Maria Janion and Przemyslaw Czaplinski, and finally the brilliant debut collection of short stories by the renowned anarcho-feminist Sylwia 'Dervish' Chutnik 'Kieszonkowy atlas kobiet' (Pocket Atlas of Women)."
Lettre International 16.12.2008 (Germany)
If, in the Eastern Bloc, you ordered "young onions, fresh Alpen butter, radishes if you have them, and two soft-boiled eggs", the waiter would bring "on a lovely old tray" three old onions, their outer skins removed, and a salty old black radish with caraway seeds. For Peter Nadas this was a sign of simulation at work: "In those years the grand idea that this society had come up with for the purposes of self-preservation was improvisation, mimicry, simulation. What could be replaced with what, and what could be swapped with what, what could be covered up or coated with what, how could something be renamed, disguised and above all: What could you secretly appropriate? And because the people whose vocation it was to name things would never call things by their names, or rather were constantly and unpredictably giving them other names than those to which they were naturally entitled, words in conversation functioned merely as cautious allusions, not as descriptions. It went so far that in essence, the difference between yes and no disappeared."
RSS
The Internet is changing our brains, philosopher Joaquin Rodriguez Lopez explains in the French magazine, Books. David Hockney shows his new iPhone drawings to the Spectator. In the New York Review of Books, historian Timothy Snyder calls for a new understanding of the Holocaust, that begins not in Auschwitz, but deep in the forests of Eastern Europe. In Literaturen, Aleksandar Hemon remembers an empty reading that turned out to be a success. Dawn introduces Michael Jackson as internalised by the Pakistanis. In the Weltwoche, pedagogy professor Georg Feuser calls for a ban on Ritalin for kids. The NYT witnesses the end of the black middle class in Detroit.
The Economist is impressed the by the hybrid of old and new media in the coverage of events in Iran. Outlook India looks at racism at home. In Le Point, Bernard-Henri Levy rallies support for the Iranian opposition. In Salon.eu.sk, Zygmunt Bauman continues his thoughts on the effects of totalitarianism in Poland. In the Guardian, Wallace Shawn explains why sex is still shocking. Al Ahram sings the praises of the Pakistanis who chased the Taliban out of their villages. In Nepszabadsag, Lajos Parti Nagy explains why he doesn't want to be Hungarian. And the TLS holds its nose in Versailles.
MicroMega wants nothing to do with the ritual of 1000 women – especially if it involves Gaddafi. Outlook India explains how Berthold Brecht put the fun into Hindu theatre. Polish author Pawel Huelle savours his vote while riding his bike. The Guardian learns from Abbas Kiarostami where to find the beauty in art. In Nouvel Obs Breyten Breytenbach wonders what went wrong in South Africa. Elet es Irodalom is irked by intellectuals who won't go to the theatre. The NYRB reads books about Darfur, the Nation reads books about Cuba. And the New York Times is very excited indeed about the new Grand Paris.
Al Ahram asks what the Arabs can do for Obama. Outlook India says the US president should have talked to non-Arab Muslims instead. Charlie Kaufman's film "Synecdoche, New York" plunged the London Review into a thick fog of existential questions. Polityka discovers a republic of soloists in Poland. The Economist loses itself in the life of an American dreamer who is pinned down by a 483,000 dollar debt. In Clarin, Beatriz Sarlo asks: What does Buenos Aires want to be? In Elet es Irodalom, Ignac Romsics describes the difference between the Western and Eastern European right. NZZ Folio travels the coast of the Black Sea. And in the Guardian, sculptor Alexander Stoddart reaches for his pistol. 
Al Ahram witnesses Tunisians hitting the roof at the Arab Theatre Festival in Cairo. Alaa Al Aswany assures the Observer that democracy is coming to Egypt soon. Polityka complains about the grumblers who have rained on the June 4 parade. The New Statesman, Prospect and The Nation discuss China. In Nouvel Obs, Michel Pastoureau describes the fine line between man and pig. In Salon.eu.sk Zygmunt Bauman criticises Slavoj Zizek for not looking "beyond the barbed wire". Bookforum is excited by the boom in African literature.
Wired explains what Google really is: an auction house. The New York Review of Books sees Pakistan near the brink of anarchy. Elet es Irodalom introduces a new Hungarian magazine about culture on the periphery. The Nation turns to the Kundera Affair. In Literaturen, novelist Barbara Vinken compares sex stories by children. The LRB is impressed by a wiki. In El Espectador, Hector Abad describes the potentially fatal consequences of reading. Espresso portrays the fascists of the third millennium.
What makes us happy?, the Atlantic asks. Outlook India celebrates the victory of secular politics in India. The Spectactor finds itself in the hour of the medievalist. The Economist explains why Perlentaucher is essential reading. Magyar Narancs asks what happened to May 8th in Hungary. In ResetDoc, Nasr Abu-Zayd explains why Afghan marriage laws have nothing to do with the Qur'an. And jazz is fading into the background in Poland.
The Nouvel Obs features an interview with Imre Kertesz about survival after survival. The New York Review of Books celebrates the affluent and brilliant Madame de Stael. Tygodnik Powszechny welcomes the first film of a Stasiuk book. In the Guardian, Elaine Showalter asks why America's women writers are so notoriously underrated. Le Point profiles Dieudonne, who has declared his anti-Semitism as art. Rue89 asks whether it's left-wing to block Internet access. And in the New Republic, John Banville reads Samuel Beckett's letters.
The Nation portrays Bulgarian mafioso and author Georgi Stoev, who met the same death as many a victim in his books. In Nepszabadsag, poet Akos Szilagyi explains why outlawing Holocaust denial would not restrict freedom of speech. The New Yorker wants to see more command responsibility. In the Gazeta Wyborcza, Roza Thun wants to see more Polish passion for the EU. Andrew Orlowski in the New Statesman has lost his belief in Long Tails on the Net. And in the New Yorker, Russell Shorto explains the difference between the Dutch and the Americans.
In Merkur Ralf Dahrendorf speaks out for the stakeholder. In the Guardian, Kazua Ishiguro warns writers not to "fart about" in their thirties. In Literaturen, Peter Sloterkijk tells it like it is: you have to put in at least 10,000 hours of practice to become even a passable craftsman or musician. The London Review explains the appeal of sharia-compliant banks. In Le Monde, philosopher and theologian Mezri Haddad talks about the vampirisation of Islam. The NYT fathoms the sub culture of drug smuggling.
In Espresso, Suketu Mehta calls upon his fellow writers to save the world from the banksters! In the Guardian, Julian Barnes reads the only poem Arthur Hugh Clough ever received a penny for. The Polish language does nothing but express distrust, Tygodnik Powszechny complains. In Commonweal, Terry Eagleton describes the clash of culture and civilization. Observator Cultural throws a spotlight on Norman Manea. And Google's clairvoyant, the Economist discovers.
In Eurozine, Serbian artists refuse to be reminded of their past. La vie des idees shows how the skirt has become a symbol of emancipation in France. In the Boston Review, Evgeny Morozov tells cyber-utopians that bloggers can be as anti-democratic as anyone else. The Spectator wants a "muscular Christianity" on its side. In Beszelö, the poet Akos Györffy sees a new Golem approaching. Paper money is confetti, Dr. Doom tells the NZZ Folio. And Douglas Adams cries on his bed in the Guardian.
Google Street View provides the London Review with the key to understanding, finally, Stendhal's description of realism. Le Figaro reads Cioran's juvenilia. Outlook India salivates over food blogs. Babelia observes the divorcees in the Teatro Colon. Vanity Fair gloats over the promiscuous micturition in the Bohemian Club.
In the Spectator, John Cleese tells a critic what a critic is. In Tygodnik Powszechny, philosopher Jean-Luc Marion has no problem proving the existence of God. In Prospect, Hanif Kureishi wishes authors had more balls. In the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh outlines the sort of sophisticated diplomacy that the Obama team needs. Espresso watches the Calabrian mafia using PTT. Wired visits a prison to hear the tale of the world's biggest diamond heist. n+1 is glad that the weirdness has been put back into German sex. The Gazeta Wyborcza drowned in the earnestness of a Berlin production of Dorota Maslowska's new play. And in the NYT, Freeman Dyson heats up the climate.
Lettre International prints Bela Hamvas' 1960 essay on direct morality and bad conscience. The Nation demands state subsidies for old media. In El Pais Semanal, Javier Cercas waits for a novel about Hitler's moustache hair. In the Guardian, Mary Beard dispels all hopes for a good death. In Novel Obs, Alain Finkielkraut does not mention the Kundera Affair. In the New York Review of Books, John Gray learns all about debt from Margaret Atwood. Elet es Irodalom dwells on otherness. The TLS celebrates Josef Skvorecky. Umberto Eco eyes up the bodies of Mussolini and Berlusconi for L'Espresso. And Carlos Fernando Chamorro sheepishly tells the New York Times how he opposed his mother.